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It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of embracing
favourable opportunities which present themselves to individuals
and communities. Opportunity makes the general, and opportunity
makes the millionaire.
"There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the
flood, leads on to fortune." There can be no question that
the present is Harrogate's golden opportunity. It has put its
house in order and is ready to receive its guests.
English Spas are fast rising in public favour. Many physicians
in London and the provinces, instead of exposing their patients
to the annoyance and fatigue of foreign travel, are very prudently
recommending them to use our own mineral springs, and it cannot
be too often repeated that there is now no need for invalids to
run the risk, or undergo the inconveniences and discomforts of a
journey to the Continent, in order to drink mineral waters. We
have as good sulphur, iron, and magnesia springs in Harrogate as
there are anywhere.
In our "temple of health," those who are sick may
rest assured of finding relief, and often a cure, for many of
"the ills that flesh is heir to," and it will be well if
patients, who are wearied and worried with the rush to
Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Kissingen, and the fleecing and flaying
experienced in these places, would take this to heart.
About the year 1591 the first mineral spring of Harrogate is
said to have been discovered by Sir William Slingsby of
Knaresborough. It is known as the Tewitt Well. He being a gallant
and a roving knight, and having travelled much in Germany and
other parts, had acquired a knowledge of mineral waters there. It
is said he made the discovery of the Tewitt Well one day while
hunting in the forest, which extended for thousands of acres
around Harrogate. In any case, he appreciated its medicinal
virtues, and took regular courses of its waters, from year to
year, up to the time of his death in 1634. These waters belong to
the Iron group - as do those from St John's Well discovered in
1631 by Dr Stanhope.
The exact date of the discovery of the Old Sulphur Well is not
known, but it must have been somewhere between 1600 and 1626, for
it was then that the first medical work on the Harrogate waters
was written by Dr Dean.
Dr Stanhope was, at that time, in the height of his glory, and
the fame of the healing springs gradually spread.
As years went on, the forest was cleared, roads were made, and
cottages built - afterwards to be succeeded by larger houses and
inns.
Strangers and visitors from the immediate neighbourhood, and
even from a distance, came and drank the waters, chiefly as an
antidote to scrofulous affections.
Many and varied are the accounts given of the modes of applying
these waters - only to be exceeded by the wonderful cures wrought
thereby. Not content with sounding their praise in prose, the
goddess of poetry was invoked, and rhymes by the yard were spun
and sung at the tap of the Queen's Head Inn.
And so the village grew and prospered - fresh mineral wells
were discovered - now amounting to between eighty and ninety (all
more or less different), hotels were built, streets laid out,
baths erected; and finally a Charter of Incorporation was granted,
and Harrogate blossomed into a Borough, with its Mayor, its mace,
and Corporation.
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